Duplicity
by theria
Summary: A semi-AU beginning two years after the 5th Moon incident. Vash the Stampede must rise from the ashes alone. Uses much from the manga. Chapter titles and blurb are done by my brother SephZero.
1. Duplicity Chapter 1

Duplicity | Chapter 1 

** Duplicity  
Chapter 1 - Return of the Legend  
By theria **

=============================================================================

_ There is a Legend that is undeniable, the mark on the fifth moon is proof enough. That is the testament of the Humanoid Typhoon, Vash the Stampede. A man must leave to confront the past that he has turned away from and in turn must bury his regrets. So taking his travel bag once more, the Humanoid Typhoon walks down the road alone. _

*********************************************

     It was in the dark early morning hour on that fateful day twenty-five years ago that the third of the seven cities disappeared in a brilliant light that left behind nothing but rubble and thousands of destitute people. Both city and month echo in the name given to that incident, Lost July. Two years ago disaster struck again, this time in the city of Augusta and left its mark for all to see on the red fifth moon. 

     There are some types of news that can spread even quicker than satellite. There are three words that can send chills down the spine, fear into the heart, and a shocking current of electricity through a once blissfully mundane life. Those words are... 

*********************************************

     "You're late, Smith!!!" roared the rotund, red-faced, and balding director of the bank. Of course, with his rolled up sleeves, flapping shirttails, and squinty eyes, he didn't look too on time himself. But one never questions authority, even when it was about a foot shorter than you were. "Damn, blond. Why, if you were one of the tellers, I'd pick you up and throw you out myself!" 

     Smith scratched his head sheepishly and escaped to the back office of the bank where he worked as a clerk. Several co-workers smiled in sympathy at his predicament but were careful to hide behind mounds of paperwork when their boss charged in to continue his tirade on his late employee. Poor Smith bore it with good humor, a slightly strained smile, and a growing sweat drop. 

*********************************************

     "Why does he always have to take things out on me?" bemoaned the aforementioned poor Smith to the desk on which his head lay. It was now time for his lunch break, or rather it would have been if his irate boss hadn't loaded him down with a ton of paperwork to finish by the end of today. "I haven't done anything wrong, maman, but he keeps picking on me. Why, maman, why?" 

     "Stop talking nonsense. If you want to whine, if that is indeed what you are doing, at least do it in a language everyone can understand." 

     Smith turned his head slightly to look at the person who had plopped down into the seat across from his desk. Like everyone else, or rather, like all of the other male employees, he was dressed in a light brown three-piece suit with a red tie. Except for some reason, he looked exceptionally well in it. 

     "Hey, buck up. You're bringing in the gloom clouds." He snapped his fingers. "I got it! Here, take a look at this!!" 

     Smith didn't have much of a choice about looking since his friend Harrison planted several photos a few inches from his face. Though he did wear glasses, it wasn't because he needed them. In the picture was a smiling couple, looking for all the world as if nothing bad was ever going to come their way. Harrison was half of that couple. 

     "You and Eliza?" 

     "Exactly! These are the pictures from the engagement party. You know, the one where you made a lovely, hard-to-forget impression on everyone there by throwing up in the punch bowl." Harrison apparently didn't remember that incident with disgust if his wide grin was any indication. Smith just dropped his forehead to his desk again and prayed for the ground to swallow him up. "You know, John, it's things like that that make the ladies stay away from you." 

     "And exactly what is wrong with me?" asked John P. Smith, taking up the challenge. 

     Harrison pretended to give that some thought. "Let's see...your inability to keep alcohol down aside, there's that five o'clock shadow, seven o'clock if you look from the right," he pointed out, "the rather long hair you keep tied back which is blond on top and black underneath, how _did_ you get it like that?" 

     "Heh...it kinda happened naturally..." Smith laughed weakly, self-consciously touching the darkened hair that came up to his temples. "Hey, if I get a shave and a haircut, I'll lose my rugged good lucks." 

     Harrison snorted. 

     "Pig." 

     "Skunk." 

     "Skunks have a _white_ stripe down the middle." 

     "Like you've ever seen one." 

     "Same for you--" 

     The rest of Smith's retort was lost in the very loud, very audible grumbling of someone's stomach. Harrison looked at his friend. Smith laughed weakly again. The foreboding pile of papers of lunchtime's bane loomed before him. Stomach and brain warred against each other. Harrison settled it. 

     "I'll buy you something while I'm out," he offered, getting up out of his chair. 

     "You're going out?" 

     "Yeah. Got to pick up something for a very important appointment in three days," winked Harrison, holding up his thumb and pointer finger curled point-to-point like a ring. The hand moved forward to flick Smith on the forehead. "And I expect to see you there in a tux, clean-shaven, and without a mop for a head." 

     Smith ruefully rubbed his head where Harrison had thonked him. :_Shave and a haircut huh?_: 

*********************************************

     When he first heard the gunshots, then the screams, he thought the bank was being robbed. By the time he reached the office door, he knew that wasn't the case. Footsteps were running out of the building, it was too soon for a bank heist. He ignored the people clustering around the bank's street windows, pushed his way past the people glued to the ground, eyes entranced by something farther down the street. 

     The jewelry shop was in that direction. 

     It's amazing how people are fascinated by the horrific, the fantastic. Give them something out of the normal tedium of their life and they'll line up like ants to a picnic to get to it. Or was it flies to rotting meat. Moths to a flame? Something like that. This fascination drove them to do some rather senseless things, like standing around a jewelry store being heisted. Or even more dangerously, standing there dumbly as one of the robbers from said heist raised a gun and fired at the silly pedestrian watching him escape. 

     Smith couldn't remember the last time he moved that fast, leaping and pushing the frozen observer out of the way of the speeding bullet. Well, okay, actually he could remember but that was less than two years ago. But then, bullet dodging wasn't a required skill for a bank clerk. 

     The robbers were quick in their getaway; the sheriff was on the other side of town. A part of Smith wanted to chase after them; another part wanted to make sure that no one had gotten hurt. The latter won and he began looking around for any telltale signs of blood. 

     There's something about blood that you can't just get out of your head once you've tasted it. It wasn't really the color or the smell, not by themselves at any rate. Funny how a red liquid could make you think of metal but it does, especially when your mouth is full of it, blood that is, not metal. Some people retch at the sight or smell of it. Others have the metallic taste of blood and guns intertwined so tightly in their mind they can't tell one or another. 

     Smith pushed open the untouched doors of the jewelry store. There was both a preternatural calmness and an agitated apprehension in his mind. It was like he _knew_ what he would see, but didn't, couldn't acknowledge it until faced with the bare, stark reality. 

     The glass displays were broken, mostly empty, their objects either long gone or scattered on the ground. On one of the walls, below the painting of a purple flower, was a blossom of red blood whose equally red stems disappeared behind the ruined counter. The people sprawled on the floor were more obviously dead, probably shot down right when the robbers came in. 

     Smith ignored the blood seeping into his shoes and pants as he knelt next to one man unfortunate enough to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. No longer were Harrison's eyes overflowing with anticipation and hope, the glassy dull lenses reflected even less than Smith's glasses. The white dress shirt and light brown vest looked like they had been splattered liberally with ketchup, if ketchup also could leave behind dark holes. On one side of him was a fallen bag of donuts. On the other, one hand rested limply, palm up, on the floor next to him, open, grasping or waiting for something to be placed into it. 

     "Three...days..." 

*********************************************

     Criminals tend to be an overconfident lot. Sometimes they have all rights to be, if they've succeeded in avoiding the law, making a clean haul and getaway. Anyone else meeting with success would take some time out to toast his good fortune. Nothing says a criminal can't do the same. 

     "Bring out your best, bartender!" hollered a member of the rowdy group that just drove in. They were in an exuberant mood to say the least. "We got us plenty of money! Don't be stingy now!!" 

     :_The customer is always right. The customer is always right._: The bartender repeated over and over to himself in his head as he brought down the bottle and walked over to deliver it. "Hey, that a ring you got in that box?" he asked one of them, indicating the small red box resting on the table. 

     "Oh yeah, a _wedding_ ring. Ain't that right boys?" 

     The group hooted and the bartender retreated, half-relieved, half-fearful when someone else passed through the swinging doors. A town-dweller from the looks of his clothes, the bartender noted, one of those daisies who toiled away all day at a desk in a lighted office with a fan. A more observant person would have noticed the dust covering his shoes and lower pant legs, the hardened remoteness behind the glasses, the brief rigidity in stance that seemed to melt away as the man entered. 

     "What can I do for you?" 

     The man flashed the bartender a smile saying 'Nothing, thank you' and walked unerringly toward the rowdy table of celebrating men. Again the mantra floated through the bartender's head, trying to convince himself this time that if that town boy wanted to talk to that rough bunch then so be it. Some lessons could only be learned the hard, and sometimes final, way. 

     "Um, excuse me..." 

     His request went unheard. He tried again. 

     "I don't mean to intrude but..." 

     Again, the occupants of the table ignored him. He sweatdropped. His eyes fell on the red box on the table and his hand followed. Only to be slammed down onto the table by a gun butt. 

     "And just what the hell do you think you're doing?" sneered the owner of the gun, his thick intoxicated breath striking this insolent punk in the face. "Didn't your parents ever teach you not to take things that aren't yours?" 

     The table broke out in raucous laughter again. 

     "That would be my line," the stranger said calmly, cutting off the laughter like a knife. He didn't flinch as the eyes around the table looked at him closely. 

     "Hey...it's that wanna-be hero outside of the store." 

     Smith recognized the speaker as well, as the person who had fired the shot. 

     "Little mama boy here to be a hero? Come to save the day with nothing but his fine clothes and faith that good always wins. Well guess what boyo. You're a very lucky guy today." 

     "You'll return everything you stole?" 

     "No." There was the familiar sound of the hammer pulling back. "You're going to be a hero. A dead one." 

*********************************************

     Smith's fingers curled around the red box, popping it open to see, to make sure the two golden bands were still sitting snuggly inside. He snapped the lid close and tucked it away into a pocket. This he would deliver in person, everything else could be left to the sheriff. Smith hoped the bartender had some insurance, those robbers were quite free with their bullets. 

     "Impressive," clapped a young voice. 

     Smith turned around, away from the thoroughly trounced robbers all lying on their broken table, to look at the audience he didn't notice he had. The bartender had run out almost immediately after the bullets started flying. So where had this boy come from? 

     "No need to make such scary eyes," the tanned youth smirked, greenish-gray hair falling messily over his odd green eyes with cat-eye slits appraising the bank clerk. From the looks of it, he had been there for awhile, at least long enough to catch the one-sided gunfight even if it hadn't lasted that long. A pair of belt holsters crossed his waist and though he was sitting rather indolently with one leg propped up on the table, his hands remained near his guns. "Didn't even need a gun. Ne, Vash the Stampede?" 

     If the boy had been expecting some kind of big denial or big shock, he would have been disappointed with the lack of reaction from the man called John P. Smith. He only stood there, looking at the boy coolly from behind round glasses. For a hot desert-like place, the temperature seemed to drop to the depths it reaches at night. 

     "...who are you?" 

     "Gung-Ho Guns 12." The boy's grin was too much like a smug cat's. He let that little announcement have time to sink in. "Zazie the Beast." 

     "..." The man who hadn't answered to the name 'Vash the Stampede' for the last two years stiffened perceptively. Rusted senses stretched futilely to their limit to perceive a man that had managed to hide in plain sight even when the ex-outlaw was at his best. "I take it then that Legato is here as well." 

     Zazie shrugged carelessly, the bright orange scarf tied around his neck following the movement. "Bluesummers isn't around though I bet he'd be quite interested in knowing where Vash the Stampede is. I haven't told him yet, since I just discovered you myself." The boy smiled cheerfully. "Did you really think you could hide yourself away here and never be found?" 

     "You're here to kill me as well?" 

     Zazie jumped off of the tabletop. "To be honest, something humans rarely are, we found you completely by accident. Rather disappointing you know, the great outlaw gunman living as a pansy bank clerk. But you can't escape." His strange eyes caught and held tight to Vash's. "You can never escape." 

     They were locked in a staring match, smirking disdain to hardened caution. 

     Zazie broke it off first, walking nonchalantly to the swinging doors, hands resting easily on his guns. At the door, he paused to toss a word of advice casually over his shoulder. "I'm sure you've managed to keep yourself insulated away these past years but try asking around for the latest news. Entire towns of missing people have been all the rage for quite awhile now. I'm sure you'll find it _very_ enlightening." 

     The young Gung-Ho Gun brushed through the doors, leaving behind the ruined bar, a pile of still unconscious robbers, and one man who couldn't escape from his past. 

*********************************************

     "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..." the priest murmured over the open grave. If it bothered him that he could barely be heard over the muffled sobbing of the departed's nearest and dearest, it didn't move him enough to raise his voice. The rest of the prayer, and in truth everything before it, was lost to Vash's ears, standing near the back of the gathered mourners. 

     It was three days after the jewelry heist in which Michael Harrison was shot and killed. The only reason he had been there was to pick up the wedding bands for the wedding that, if there was any sanity in the world, should have been held today. Instead, they were burying him. 

     On the finger of Harrison's fiancée Eliza was one of the wedding bands and Vash had little doubt that inside the closed casket, the matching partner would be on his friend's finger. He remembered going to her home, the first thing he did after returning to town. Sweaty and dusty, he must have been quite a sight on her doorstep. 

     "Thank you, Mr. Smith," Eliza tried to smile amidst her tears. The service had ended and the guests were beginning to drift back to town for the wake. To his perplexed expression and protests of having done nothing, she explained, "You brought back our rings." Caught up in another rush of choking emotions, Eliza gripped her hands tightly, especially the ring finger as if that was her only link to reality. It was certainly perhaps her only remaining physical link to Harrison. 

     Vash watched as Eliza's parents hurried her away. The gravedigger was already beginning to shovel in the sand into the hole. There was a wind today and it kind of tickled across the back of his neck. It had been some time since he felt it that well. 

     "Excuse me," Vash smiled at the gravedigger, it was an empty smile but few people bothered to notice. "I'd like to have some last words with my friend here." 

     The gravedigger snorted and planted his shovel in the ground. Pulling out a cigarette, he meandered over to another grave marker outside of eavesdropping distance and proceeded to smoke while leaning against it. Perhaps with dealing with the dead everyday he's grown insensitive to it. 

     "Well, Harrison... here I am. Hair cut, face shaved. I think you'll forgive me if I didn't wear the tux, though the suit is black. ...three days ago, who would have thought that this would be where we'd be standing?" Vash's eyes strayed to the distant horizon, feeling the wind move through his hair, unable to convince it to stay down. He wore no glasses now. 

     "If you hadn't offered to pick some food for me, or even if you had decided to get the ring first and the food after, perhaps you wouldn't have been in the jewelry store when it was robbed." 

     "I'm sure you, or someone, would be insisting that I'm crazy to be blaming myself for this. I can't help it. I can't stand it when people die like this. I can't stand being completely unable to something about it. Did you know? There was a time when I was able to do something about it. But then I found out I was capable of something even worse and I ran away. I ran away from everything." 

     "I thought...that perhaps the world would be better off without someone like me. That perhaps...things would have been better off if we had never been born. Then none of you would be forced to live on this planet. Rem...and everyone would still be alive." 

     "I really can't do anything can I? I got your rings back but I couldn't save you from dying. I know I'm capable of doing something terrible, and all I can do is run away and hide. Was it wrong? Was it wrong to run away? Wrong to wish for a quiet life where each day is the same as the next and the one before?" 

     "I had two years...and I guess that has to be enough. My past is catching up to me, in more ways than one. I met a boy when I went to get back your rings. I don't know if he'll reveal where I am. But now that he's found me, it's probably best that I get moving." 

     "Don't worry about me, I'm not running away again. No, _he_'s made sure I won't. I'm kind of surprised I didn't hear about it earlier, the missing townspeople. Towns abandoned for no reason as if for some reason people suddenly got the idea to get up and leave. There are no clues about where they've gone or why. There's only one thing. One name that might make any difference at all but only to the right person. The name written in blood on the monument of each ghost town. _Knives_." 

     "It's a lure to draw me out, draw me in. I know it. He knows it. But I can't stay away anymore." Vash looked back down at the coffin, for one last final time. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to do anything. Good bye." 

     Brushing the sand off of his pants, Vash gave a signal to the gravedigger that he was done and picked up his black travel bag. It'll be a bit tight to catch the bus to the next town but he should be able to make it if he ran. He couldn't stay here any longer. Still, he had the nagging feeling he had forgotten something. 

*********************************************

     "Smith? Smith, where the hell are you?!" the bank director hollered, the veins in his pudgy throat bulging. He was waving something in his hand and swearing profusely at his favorite target. 

     "Um, sir? Smith resigned remember?" 

     "I remember _that_. The imbecile forgot to pick up his last paycheck!!" 


	2. Duplicity Chapter 2

Duplicity | Chapter 2 

** Duplicity  
Chapter 2 - Weapon of Choice  
By theria **

=============================================================================

_ Weapons have no emotions. They are simply tools to be used. Many people feel that the only use for a weapon is for killing. If it fulfills the purpose, why not use it that way? After all, it doesn't feel anything for the victim. No emotions lies in its frame. Do I want a weapon to kill? No, I want a weapon that I can use to protect. That is what I want. _

*********************************************

     Vash the Stampede, though not generally a household face, was at least a household rumor blown out of proportion. Okay, so maybe the damage wasn't exaggerated too much but tongues ran wild about his appearance. It was like any tall guy with a big gun of some sort could call himself the famous outlaw, er, ex-outlaw, he forgot the bounty had been removed, all part of being named a localized disaster zone, and everyone would believe him. 

     "They couldn't do a better job of ruining my good name if they tried," Vash sighed over a plate of salmon finger sandwiches, munching on them without much enthusiasm but refusing to let anyone else touch them. "And my jacket, this was a perfectly fine jacket until you had to put some bullet holes through it." 

     His comment was directed at the group of tied-up, bruised and hurting would-be bandits that the friendly locals were keeping under gunpoint until they could be moved to the long-unused sheriff's office doubling as the local jail. Since they didn't have a sheriff in this quaint little town of Warrens, the building was quite dirty and needed a bit of cleaning up, and some new chains and locks, before it could accommodate the misguided sheep of society. 

     "That was so cool!" gawked a young admirer complete with starry eyes. "The way you beat them up and didn't get hit by a single bullet! It's just like what you did to those bank robbers two years ago! I can hardly believe you're really here!" 

     "I'm not _that_ cool, not with these holes in my jacket," Vash laughed weakly, putting a finger through one to emphasize his point. Another reminder that he was sorely out of shape. Well, one doesn't return to a lifetime and longer of conditioning after a two-year absence in a matter of days. Which was why he needed a gun, preferably his gun, in order for him to really get back into training again. That was why he came back here, to take up Frank Marlon on his offer. He could remember it like it was yesterday... Actually, it's been about a week. 

*********************************************

     "Well, I was thinking how we're such good friends, and seeing how you did fix up my gun last time I came through here," Vash laughed carelessly, if not a bit sheepishly with his hand scratching the back of his head. "I was thinking of asking you to make me a new gun, same style as my old one." 

     Frank Marlon, famous gunsmith who had shaken himself out of a decade long drunken stupor two years ago but still looked rather scary anyway, gave Vash a look that clearly said 'I'm not buying it'. He was a bit perplexed to see this blond, or rather half-blond, again without that distinctive red coat that made him look like a runaway from a carnival. Not to say that it was the clothes entirely that made the man but he appeared so...normal without it, the average Joe. 

     "What do you mean 'old one'? What happened to it?" 

     "I lost it." 

     Marlon looked up at Vash smiling as if he didn't have a care in the world. The gunsmith's grimy finger beckoned for Vash to come closer. He obliged, stooping since he was taller than the guy was. Marlon whacked him over the head a good one and turned away. 

     "Awwwww, please make me a new gun!!" shamelessly whined the grown man latched onto Marlon's leg, making it difficult for the gunsmith to take a step, much less walk forward. "PLEASE!!!!!!!" 

     "I can't work with a noisy idiot hanging around me." 

     Vash perked up at those words, ending the ridicule he was making of himself by getting back on his feet. "You'll do it? You'll really do it? Ah, I knew there was still good left in this world," he cheered, almost hugging Marlon in his glee but remembered himself in time. A piece of paper was slapped into his face. "Huh? What's this?" 

     "A list of stuff to do. Since I'll be working on your gun, you'll need to take care of these things for me. Consider it payment for my work," Marlon threw over his shoulder as he continued walking back to his place, the wheels in his head already turning to stamp out the gun design and needed materials. 

     "Whaaaaaaaaat?" whined the grown man. "But you said you'd do it for free last time~~~!" 

     "That was for a tune-up, not for a replacement!!" 

     "You're so mean." 

     "I can always not make the gun." 

     "Thank you so much for taking the time to fulfill the request of this humble petitioner, I shall get to work on whatever you want me to immediately!" 

*********************************************

     On a cliff side overlooking the town, a very familiar cliff side, a group of men sitting in and around a roofless car lounged and looked at naughty magazines. No, this was not the designated reading spot for such printed media. 

     "Hey, bro!!" called out a muscular, almost bald man with a star tattoo on his brow who was running up the slope to the parked car. "It was him! That red coat, broom head hero cowboy that screwed up the armored trunk heist two years ago!" 

     Yes, it was _them_. 

     "He don't have the red coat anymore and all he's doing is hanging around town. Some of the people say he's waiting for a gun to be made." 

     "Which means," snickered 'bro', the all-angular man who had claimed to be Vash the Stampede before, as he tossed aside this month's issue of that aforementioned but not titled naughty magazine to jump on top of the car seat. "Our little party crasher hasn't got himself a pretty, little gun. We'll draw him out here and get our payback!" 

     "I don't think so." 

     "Who said that?!?" 'bro' shrieked. His gang all shook their heads. 

     "Disgusting." 

     The nude woman on the naughty magazine's cover was impaled by a gray blade, as if it was only a piece of litter picked up by a pointed stick. The other end of the blade disappeared under the dusty brown folds of a cloaked person. Though the ends of the cloak swayed with the wind, there had been no sound of this newcomer's approach. 

     "Who the hell are you??" 

     "..." 

*********************************************

     An explosion rang out over the town, bringing people to their doors and windows trying to find the source. This was so they could do one of two things, run away in the opposite direction or run _toward_ it to catch a piece of the action. It was a sad but true state of things. 

     The plume of dark, greasy smoke made it easy to locate the source of the peaceful day's disturbance. Now why exactly there was smoke coming from there, no one could really say with any confidence and few felt up to the task of rectifying that spot of ignorance. 

     Vash however was a part of that few. 

     Besides having the natural talent of attracting trouble, he was also remarkably good at finding it when the time called for it. Only a little bit out of breath, he hit the end of the slope where it turned flat, as if it was an empty stage awaiting its actors. The acrid smell of burned flesh and burning rubber were not delightful things to be tingling Vash's senses but tingling they were. 

     There was only a little wind up here, but it was all reserved to sway the tattered cape of the hooded person who was suddenly standing on one of the boulders. Perhaps 'suddenly' is too extreme of a word. Vash hadn't _noticed_ her standing there when he came up. Man, he really needed to get back into training. 

*********************************************

     Two old people sat rocking in their rocking chairs back and forth, back and forth, back and... 

     Another explosion boomed from the edge of town, the same edge of town. People were beginning to wonder exactly what was going on up there. No one knew of any new mining excavations going on. These two old people though just nodded and grinned understandingly with all of the wisdom that is supposed to come with old age. 

     The particularly wrinkly and toothless old granny tried to cluck reprovingly but it came out more like loose jaw flapping. "Young'uns these days. A little smoke and they all go running for the closets. Why, in my day, I'd be in the rough-n-tumble quicker than you can say lickety-split!" 

     There was a hail of machine gun fire that effectively ended the old maid's turn at speech. Not that logically, they should have been able to hear that all the way down in town, but no one was around who cared enough to question it. 

     "They all carry around guns like that means anything. How many of them have ever fired one?" cackled the old man, some spittle splattering on his pale lips. Apparently, the two here were members in good standing of the old, senile, and decrepit brigade. "Why, I could shoot an earring off of a pretty girl's ear at fifty yarzs!" 

     "And blow her ear off with it!" 

     As if on cue, there came another explosion, signaling a switch in topics. A high-pitch scream, okay wail, echoed through the air. 

     "Good lungs that boy has." 

     "Sounds like a girl." 

*********************************************

     "Ti...Time...out...!" Vash gasped, trying to quietly catch his breath behind a still as of yet intact boulder. He hadn't needed to run around like this for at least the last two years. :_Really should stop complaining about the two year thing..._: Beating up amateurs in a bar was one thing. Running from machinegun-wielding maniacs in all concealing ragged cloaks was an entirely different matter. People don't normally just start shooting like mad at the first person they see. 

     The shooting had stopped. Well, he was kind of hoping that she had run out of bullets by now. He hadn't recognized the model exactly, mainly because his brain at the time was more concerned with telling his feet to get them the hell out of the way of that barrel. And then between the explosions, his little hunter was packing dynamite or something, and the bullet hails, he might have lost count. 

     Well, Vash was never particularly known as one to shirk starting a conversation. 

     "I don't suppose we could talk about this?" 

     Something kind of round and gray dropped on the ground beside him. Vash freaked out. 

     BOOM!! 

     Half-jumping, half flying, he landed in a dusty heap of arms and legs, all his and accounted for, on a reasonably clear and flat area of dirt. That was good. Landing on sharp rocks, with the sharp side up, was painful. His clothes were getting enough damage as it was. Oh look, a pair of boots...oh boy. 

     Vash smiled weakly up at a barrel of a machine gun, a slim machine gun model he had never seen before that almost seemed to be floating above the owner's arm. Now how could a gun just stay like that when only held by the trigger? The trigger finger squeezed ever so slightly. Vash prayed to whatever god there was that she was out of bullets. 

     "Are you really Vash the Stampede?" asked a cold, cold but definitely feminine, voice. 

     "If I say yes, will you kill me?" He was getting cross-eyed watching that barrel. A gun right now would be kind of nice. Though he was kind of reluctant to use a weapon on a lady, a lady that could keep him on the run for the last ten minutes most definitely earned his respect. 

     "Why are you holding back?" 

     Well, looks like she just skipped the ascertain-identity part and went right on to the grind. "Well, I think you can see that I'm not really armed right now..." It was hard to tell at times, when the sheepishness in Vash's voice was real or fake. He had perfected and used the act for so long now, even he couldn't tell the difference sometimes. 

     "Well, they did mention that you were probably getting a new gun. But I wasn't talking about that." If he could see her eyes, Vash was sure they would be boring through him right now like those lasers he saw a long time ago back on the ships. "You have another weapon. A hidden one." 

     Was she talking about the one in his arm? How the hell did she learn his artificial arm held a hidden machine gun, or for that matter that he even had one, a prosthetic arm. Well, used to anyway, have a gun in that arm. Let's just say something happened to that arm and the one he had now was simply a civilian model. Something else he needed to get fixed. Just as soon as he got his new gun from Marlon and this explosive-happy, trigger-happy, and yet unnervingly calm lady far away from him. 

     "Unfortunately, I've been disposed of it for quite some time. Would you mind my compliments on _your_ model which appears to be quite stylish and still effective? I don't suppose you'd refer me to whomever you bought it from?" 

     The machine gun barrel lowered ever so more closely to Vash's brow, not that he could get anymore cross-eyed. It did however give him a very interesting view of the gun...and how some kind of metal rod seemed to extend from the palm of her hand up the gun. So that's how it stayed on. Hey, but then that meant _her_ arm was also... 

     "Don't play games with me." A long thin blade ever so gently laid itself down across Vash's torso. If he was going to make any sudden moves, there was going to be some filleting being done. "Neither machine gun nor pistol could wreck the kind of damage you've done to the two cities and the moon." 

     Vash froze. 

     It was of course a perfectly logical conclusion for someone to come to, that no normal weapon was capable of causing such damage. Perhaps some people had suspected some weapon created from Lost Technology. Once they might dismiss as a fluke, twice then people may begin to suspect, add in a hole in the moon that everyone could see, then the ones who think know that this is far beyond anything manmade. 

     "So. You're here for revenge?" Perhaps that's how she lost her arm. Looking beyond the very obvious gun right in his face, Vash's sharp eyes pierced the shadows of the hood to look at his attacker. Angular, harsh even, lines on a face that looked too young for the detachedness written all over it. Her eyes, one a smoldering gray, the other a black and silver metal contraption that whirled and clicked, met his gaze without flinching. He remembered the eyes of Elizabeth, the plant engineer who wanted to kill him for the aftermath of Lost July. Those eyes were filled with sorrow. These eyes weren't. "Or...something else." 

     "You have a weapon, hidden somewhere on you, _in_ you, that is capable of great destruction." Vash wondered if she was speaking, knowingly, of what Legato had forced his arm to transform into. Probably not but it was damn well close. "Eyewitness accounts from August confirm that you were _not_ seen bringing or displaying any kind of weapon other than a revolver. Perhaps Lost July was destroyed by some kind of bomb. But no bomb could have marked the moon." 

     "You know," Vash said slowly, while his mind was rapidly trying to find a way for him to get out of his scenario intact, "You are the first person to confront me on that point. Most people don't bother; they just want the money. But you aren't in it for revenge or for money, so why did you track me down? Just to satisfy your curiosity?" 

     "You have not used that weapon against me even though I'm about to take your life." 

     "Well, to tell the truth, I dislike violence and have a personal oath to never kill." 

     "Your past brings that into question. You...are not to supposed to be like this." 

     "Sorry if I ruined any grand ideas of a diabolical and despicable angel of destruction." 

     "When a weapon is turned against you, it is only natural to fight back." 

     He closed his eyes. A small voice sitting in a corner of his mind remarked how this wasn't really the best place and time to be having this kind of discussion. Vash was still hoping he could talk her out of whatever homicidal impulses she had toward him right now. Even more, he wanted to know why her eyes, or rather eye, looked that way. 

     "It's the person that's wielding the weapon that would be hurting me. If I fight back, then that person will get hurt. I want to avoid that as much as possible." 

     "And if there is no 'person' but only the weapon, there is no need to play humanitarian. A weapon simply exists for its purpose. To kill." 

     Was it his imagination or did he see something flicker in her dark eyes? Of course, it could also be a delusion coming on from all the time he's been lying out here out under the merciless sun. Idly, he wondered if she was getting hot under that cloak, crouching just before his head with weapons ready to kill him. 

     "Weapons don't kill or hurt. It's the people wielding them that do," he said sadly. "Weapons by themselves can't do anything." 

     "But a living weapon can. A living weapon can only move forward, finding other weapons to cross against. A living weapon has no remorse, no sorrow. A living weapon can only...destroy. _You_ are a living weapon, Vash the Stampede. You _will_ fight me." 

     Little red sirens flashed in Vash's mind, signaling to him that this lady has been spending way too much time under the sun. Well, seeing what his arm could...turn into, that was a part of him, he probably couldn't argue that he wasn't harboring some kind of weapon. If it was a part of him, did that make it alive? 

     But it was more than that. A weapon, by definition, was something used to injure, defeat, or destroy. As much as he avoided doing the last of those three, 'injure' and 'defeat', yes, he's done plenty of that during his long life, even probably during the periods of time he couldn't remember. That was what he was always complaining about these days wasn't it, all of his training and conditioning shot to heck. Why was it so important? 

     Because he wanted to stop other people from killing each other, hurting each other, and he didn't want to die in the process of doing so. 

     So what had he done? He picked up a gun and learned how to shoot it, shoot it so well that he knew exactly what he was and was not hitting. He trained himself to perfection, because anything less would lead to mistakes, fatal mistakes on either his part or someone else's. So what did that make him? 

     A weapon, a living one. 

     "I may be a living weapon..." 

     And that was before the entire morphing arm incident. 

     But... 

     "But that doesn't make me any less...human." 

     He looked beyond her now, up into the endlessly blue sky. Clouds were rare, the environment of this planet wasn't a receptive one for their formation. Certainly there were never any _rain_ clouds. He remembered seeing some back on the ship. My but he was nostalgic today. 

     Something akin to a rough chuckle, one from a throat suffering from long misuse or was that lack of use, rumbled through the hunter. Her body shuddered, the blade across Vash's torso cutting a bit into the cloth there, enough to make him wince. That gun barrel was pressing quite painfully into his brow. 

     "Human? What exactly is left...of the human? You disappoint me, Vash the Stampede. All of the time and effort I spent in searching for the only person like me...you are nothing...you cannot give me the release I've been seeking...you _should_ die." 

     Vash waited for the foreboding and final squeeze. For some reason, he had absolutely no urge to try to escape, which he probably could, out of shape and all. There was something nagging him from that remote corner of his mind. It had certainly been quiet and still. 

     That cybernetic eye of hers, he wondered what it did, anything beyond the ordinary that is, was silent and unmoving. For that matter, she hadn't moved at all, not since coming down onto her knees to trap him between blade and bullet. Her muscles must be screaming by now. 

     "Ummm, not to sound pushy and all, but are you going to kill me?" 

     "...Kanon." 

     :_Canon? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I hope she doesn't have a canon hidden somewhere. That would be bad. Very bad._: 

     "A diety who refrained from entering the final state beyond desire and suffering to save and assist others in reaching 'heaven'. A being of mercy..." 

     Vash was feeling really lost about now. 

     "Mercy comes in many ways, Vash the Stampede. I can no longer feel my arms." 

     Finally, he understood, what it was that he saw in her eyes. 

     "A mechanical heart can only last so long." 

     It wasn't for revenge or money or curiosity that she had come here, seeking him. 

     "There is nothing 'human' left in me," murmured a voice barely above a whisper, lips not moving. Or maybe he had imagined it. The cybernetic eye had long since ceased to respond. The other eye reflected nothing, nothing at all. Because there was nothing left. 

     She had come here to die. 

*********************************************

     "Just what the hell are you doing up here?" Marlon's shoulders heaved with the gulps of air he was swallowing. The walk up the slope was nothing to laugh about. He looked at Vash who was standing before one of several makeshift graves. From somewhere, Vash had come up with a grave marker. "Canon? You buried a piece of artillery?" 

     "Well, I don't think that's how it's spelled but I couldn't think of another spelling and I'm not even sure it's her name," Vash replied offhand. Now that he thought back about it, she had probably lost the use of her legs first, which was why she had knelt down. She died where she was, her 'inhuman' body shutting down. From what he could examine without doing an autopsy or something her body was mostly cybernetic and it had finally reached its limit. Like any 'weapon', once the parts begin to fail, there was only 'death'. 

     He would never know, or more likely understand, the reason she sought him out. She didn't appear suicidal but she seemed to want something like one last good fight. However, not anyone would do, it had to be someone like her, another living weapon. And he couldn't give her that, even if it was her 'dying' wish. 

     "Well, life goes on and all that. What are you doing up here?" Vash asked Marlon as if noticing the gunsmith's presence for the first time. 

     Marlon opened his mouth to retort, thought better of it, and gestured for Vash to follow him. They returned to town, to a clear dead end alley with a human-shaped target propped up in the end. The gunsmith held out something silvery. "Here." 

     "Wow, this looks a lot like my old one," Vash whistled in appreciation, taking the proffered gun and testing the grip in his hand. Same metal coloring, similar grip and barrel setting, six-shot, the only really noticeable difference was the barrel casing. Now it was mostly one smooth metal casing, not like the split casing of before, where the ridged portion held its little secret. 

     Marlon snorted as if there was any doubt about his gunsmithing ability, watching Vash run through some practice draws. Loading the revolver with a speed loader, Vash began making holes in the stationary target. Having not actually seen Vash draw and shoot any gun before, Frank Marlon's eyes were wide with surprise and appreciation. 

     "Not bad," he finally managed from dry lips. And if he didn't miss his guess, all of the shots were precise, all in non-vital areas of the body. This wasn't a gun that was going to be used for killing. Not that he ever doubted this strange young man whose name he still didn't know. "Well, Lightning, how is it?" 

     Vash's eyes were critical as he regarded his shots. Apparently, his standards were higher. "A bit off... Hmm? Oh you mean the gun? It's great, almost like my old one even. I almost thought it was," he laughed sheepishly, the earlier pensive look in his eyes gone. Then something, a thought, hit him. 

     "There is one thing different which I'm sure you noticed." Marlon held up a finger for emphasis and tapped the chamber above the barrel of the revolver. "Right here. I didn't know what it was last time I looked over your gun and I haven't figured it out since. Obviously, I couldn't replace it so I didn't use a split casing like on your old one. Seems I gauged the weight distribution right if it doesn't affect your shooting." The gunsmith scratched his head with his stained fingers. "I don't suppose you know what it was." 

     Boy did he ever, the scene from Augusta burned into his mind. It had conveniently slipped his mind when he asked Marlon to build him a replacement. Heck, even he wasn't too sure what it was, Knives was probably the only one who did. Wherever his old gun was now, he hoped it was buried under a ton of rock. No one should have that kind of power. 

     "Not much really, except that the person who made the gun put it in there." Out of old habit, Vash spun the gun around his finger and almost slid it back into its holster. The problem? He wasn't wearing a gun holster. 

     "You'd better get yourself something to carry that big lug around in. It isn't some Beretta you can keep hidden in a jacket or something. Oh yeah, there's one more thing." Marlon produced a long piece of string, each end tipped by a small round clip and one of those tips was currently attached to a wristband. "Now, you slip the band on your gun hand and the other end of the string clips onto the small hook I added to the bottom of the grip. This is to make sure you don't go losing your gun again. A Frank Marlon special isn't something to sneeze about." 

     Vash blinked, looking at the now string attached gun. He threw it out in the air and before it reached the end of its tether, jerked it back. It landed neatly in his hand. "Hey, cool!" He began throwing it around like it was a lasso or a very large yo-yo. "Around the World!" 

     Marlon whacked him in the back of the head. "It's not a toy!! Treat your gun with respect!" 


End file.
